Andy (00:00):

You’re not alone. And so all parents are dealing with this issue, and I think we’re all kind of conditioned to view any struggle we have with technology as a parenting failure. It’s not, it’s here’s your get out of jail free card. You are not responsible. It is not your fault. If your kid has problems with technology, it is not your fault. It is stuff that is being designed in order to encourage these undesirable behaviors that are very harmful for kids.

Dr. Sarah (00:33):

Technology is shaping the way the kids learn, but at what cost. Joining me for this conversation is Andy Liddell, a career federal courts litigator and technology attorney. Since 2010, he has helped clients resolve complex multimillion dollar disputes involving patents, trademarks, and trade secrets. But in recent years, he and his wife and law partner Julie, have targeted their attention to fighting for the rights and wellbeing of students, parents, teachers, and school districts against exploitative technology companies. In this episode, we dig into the widespread use of iPads, Chromebooks, and lots of different learning softwares that are in classrooms everywhere, questioning whether they truly enhance learning or if they’re encouraging passive consumption and displacing hands-on education. Andy explains the hidden dangers of surveillance capitalism and persuasive design that a lot of these tech companies utilize shedding light on how big tech companies profit from our children’s data. We also discussed the inequity of tech in schools, its impact on social interactions and developmental stages, and the challenges of algorithm bias on disadvantaged populations. Plus, Andy shares actionable insights for parents, how to advocate for your child’s rights, how to teach media literacy, and how to create opportunities for critical thinking and real world engagement at home. This isn’t just a cautionary tale, it is an empowering roadmap for protecting your child’s education, fostering resilience, and sparking meaningful conversations about technology in schools.

(02:17):

Hi, I’m Dr. Sarah Bren, a clinical psychologist and mom of two. In this podcast, I’ve taken all of my clinical experience, current research on brain science and child psychology, and the insights I’ve gained on my own parenting journey and distilled everything down into easy to understand and actionable parenting insights so you can tune out the noise and tune into your own authentic parenting voice with confidence and calm. This is Securely Attached.

(02:47):

Hello, we have Andy Liddell here on the securely Attached podcast. Thank you so much for being here.

Andy (02:57):

Thanks, Sarah. My pleasure. Really excited to talk to you today.

Dr. Sarah (03:00):

Yeah, so I’m really grateful you came on the show and I’m hoping we could start off with maybe you giving parents just a kind of intro into what EdTech is as a concept and then why you have been so active in creating advocacy to support parents in combating some of the impacts that it’s having.

Andy (03:29):

Sure. Yeah. So EdTech really, it describes a market and not a device or a platform. It’s just technology that’s sold into schools that’s being used ostensibly for the purpose of educating young people. It’s very prevalent in K through 12 education and it’s really taken off in the last 15 years and really since 2012 with the advent of the iPad and the Chromebook, very low cost computers that have been sold into schools. Schools have changed a lot since we were young. I just turned 40 this year, and so when I was a kid, we had technology in schools, it was in the computer lab, and we would go to the computer lab and learn computer skills or we take what we learned in English class and then type up a paper in the computer lab. The model has kind of been turned on its head since then where computers are now being used to teach everything in schools. So you’re really not necessarily learning just separately about computers, but all of your subjects in some of the more extreme cases are being fed to you as a student through your iPad or your Chromebook.

Dr. Sarah (04:38):

Got it. I feel like a lot of parents, anecdotally parents I talk to in my practice, parents I talk to just in life as a parent of kids entering the kindergarten, first grade space. My son is in first grade, my daughter’s in kindergarten. They have ambivalence about it, but they’re also kind of like don’t really get that much about it one way or the other. It seems like, oh yeah, we’ve got Google Classroom, our kids assignments are all on the computer. Some parents like that. They get alerts all the time about every single assignment that’s missing, which we could talk a little bit about what the downsides to that are, but also that their kids are on screens a lot during the day, a lot. And is there any research that says that’s beneficial? Is there any research that says it’s actually harmful?

Andy (05:32):

There’s not much research that is not industry funded that says that it’s beneficial. Objective. University-based research labs have looked into this and the results are mixed at best. One of, I think the most accessible authors on this topic is a doctor, an educational neurologist. His name is Jared Cooney Horvath, and he’s done many studies and written some more general audience texts as well about this issue. And the answer is no. The answer is there is no evidence that this really works a lot better for students and is improving educational outcomes. There’s quite a bit of evidence that overall student mental health, young people, mental health has declined for the past 10 to 15 years or so, and their educational attainment has declined as well. And that coincides with, as I mentioned, the widespread adoption beginning in 20 11, 20 12 of iPads and Chromebooks in the classroom.

Dr. Sarah (06:40):

And so what are kids using these for typically? What is, I mean, in my practice, I am looking at kids sometimes who are using them for phys ed class. They’re using them in every single class of the day. Is that unusual? Is that pretty typical?

Andy (06:59):

That’s certainly the goal of these ed tech companies is to sit kids in front of these screens for their entire, not just their entire school day, but their entire childhood, their entire life as students from K to 12. And so no, that’s not typical. You asked what kids are using these for, and I smiled because mostly watching YouTube, mostly playing games, that’s what they’re using them for. What they’re intended to be used for is learning, but these devices are not designed for schools. And so one of the big misconceptions that many parents have, and one of the things that makes this industry so pernicious is because it’s being used in school, it has to be safe. Everything in school is safe. It’s designed for kids, it’s designed for the school environment. So you think about the playground equipment. Well, if we shipped a big kit of parts to your daughter’s first grade class and said, here, kids assemble the playground and then the playground collapses and somebody gets hurt or worse, we wouldn’t blame the kids.

(08:00):

We would wonder what is going on? Why are we asking kids to do this? And so EdTech is no different than that. I mean, our goal at the EdTech Law Center is to treat every computer in school. We treat everything else in school, which is it has to be designed for the environment and used for the environment. And so we have to think about distraction and we have to think about maturity and neurological development and your eye health, but also how kids learn. And we know that kids really learn by physically interacting with their environment. And we also know that most of our computing tools today are designed to be distracting. The internet is designed to be distracting. It’s designed to capture and hold your attention from anything else. And we can talk more about that, but nothing is being designed for the school environment.

Dr. Sarah (08:53):

Oh man, it’s so hard. I mean, I’m a student of child development. I believe very strongly that kids need to, even kids well past first grade, kindergarten, first grade years need to be playing as much as they can with their materials in order to learn, truly integrate what they’re learning. And that play evolves as kids get older. But that hands-on experiential learning environment is just the passivity of receiving that information from a video concerns me because I think I could see how that would really impair a kid’s retention of the stuff and also their relationship with it. If you’re constantly receiving information from this passive position, how do you become an active and critical thinker, an active problem solver? Are those kinds of the things that are any questions like that being brought up in some of work that you’re doing in the legal space?

Andy (10:07):

These are absolutely the concerns that are motivating our work. It’s tough because the law doesn’t always protect the very most important things. And so our framework that we approach these problems with is that EdTech steals, it hurts and it doesn’t work. And stealing and hurting those are actionable. Not working, can be actionable depending on what these providers say about their product, that’s a harder one to bring.

(10:35):

But fundamentally, I’m very concerned about not just from a scientific standpoint, but from a value standpoint, from what do we want for our kids? And we can argue all day long with industry backed research to say, oh, well, this has improved performance by X percent, but at the end of the day, I want an environment where my kids and your kids, all of our kids are free from commercial exploitation and free from surveillance, and one that’s not mediated by the internet, one that doesn’t condition them, like you say, toward passive consumption, one that doesn’t frame the future as a product that other people sell to you for profit and not something that you have any say in whatsoever. And so there are these very deep concerns that we have in our work that are always reflected in the immediate legal strategy.

Dr. Sarah (11:28):

Right. So can you talk a little bit about the surveillance piece and the privacy piece? That sounds like something that has a bit more teeth from a legal standpoint, I would imagine.

Andy (11:38):

Absolutely. And so if you’ll forgive me, a little brief detour about the business model of the internet now is one that’s been called surveillance capitalism. And the idea behind surveillance capitalism, you might’ve heard the old chestnut, if not paying for it, you’re the product, right? And that’s sort of what it is really though you’re the raw material. And so the way these companies work is that they follow you around metaphorically across the internet, through your device, but sometimes in real life, right? Because your phone has location tracking, your devices have location tracking, and so they follow you around, they observe your behavior, and the way that they make their money is they make predictions about what you’re going to do, and then they sell those predictions to somebody who wants to pay for them, and then they’re incentivized to make those predictions come true. That’s the basis of this business model.

(12:28):

And so the end user is not really the customer, it’s the person paying for those insights that is the customer. And this has some really bad effects on how we as human beings interact with the internet. And so if you think about other tools in your life that you use, they don’t want anything from you, the pen sitting on your desk, the notebook sitting in your dresser, those things don’t want anything from you. You can pick ’em up and write. But if you’re a company that makes money by observing behavior, well, what you want is more behavior to observe. And so these companies use these psychological tricks that are called persuasive design or coercive design, but there are these design choices that are baked into most of the products on the internet, including things that are benign or seemingly like email that gets you using them more and more often.

(13:23):

And so that surveillance piece is behind everything on the internet, even in school. And so much of what is being used in school is not just a one way tool like pen and paper. It’s looking back at you again, metaphorically through things like cookies or pixels or other tracking technology. And that has a really distorting effect on the quality of the product. And so these companies aren’t always, or even for the most part, competing on who can educate kids the best, who can have the best outcomes as are observed by non-biased researchers. What they’re competing for is who can capture the most data about young people and who can find a way to get it out onto the market. And so these companies will swear up and down, oh, we’re not selling the data. Well, of course not selling the raw data, but they are doing things with it to sell inferences about it and find other ways to monetize it that are rarely used for the benefit of the people that’s being collected from. And they’re always being used for the benefit of the person who’s paying for it. And so that model, if you think about it, it’s the exact same model as social media. And I’m sure many of you listeners have heard about the social media victims lawsuit and the social media victims law center. That business model holds here too. And we don’t think that it should, but it absolutely does.

Dr. Sarah (14:54):

Yeah, that’s very disturbing. And I think parents listening might have a really big problem with that and maybe hadn’t considered the fact that their kids’ Chromebook might be collecting data on whether, like you said, maybe they’re not monitoring them through the camera, but they are looking at what they click on. They are looking at how long they spend on those sites. I also feel like, and I don’t know if this is true in all school districts, but I’m a little confused how there are any sort of protections on what kids can access during the school day. I know that where my practice is located, the school district that we are in, I know that there are issues where a teacher will assign something and students are able to go look up other things online that are unrelated to the assignment. And if you’re asking a bunch of seventh graders to pay attention, but you are giving them access to the entire internet and then they’re not able to pay attention, whose fault is that? Is the seventh grader for not being able to inhibit that impulse? Or is it the system in which we are saying, Hey, pay attention to me up here or pay attention to this one tab on your computer right here, but just ignore all of this other fun stuff over here that’s very, very sparkly and very, very enticing, but then you’re going to get in trouble if you go there. How much can they block?

Andy (16:29):

Well, that’s a good question. So these devices tend to come into schools with no filters applied whatsoever, and schools have to pay for extra security. That extra security is often illusory or palliative. And maybe I can come back on in a few months after we’ve filed some additional lawsuits in this space. I don’t want to say more about that before I’m ready. But our strong suspicion is most of these companies that purport to keep kids safe online, way over promise and way under deliver. And so I can leave it there, but it’s very difficult, right? The internet is wide open and it’s hard to block everything. And again, I think that paradigm is one that’s really unfair to kids. You ask whose fault it is, it’s our fault As adults, we’re the ones who shape the environment. We’re the ones who ostensibly know what’s best for kids and are charged with raising them.

(17:31):

Well, we’re failing kids here because asking them, demanding that they rely on their own willpower to pay attention in an environment full of distractions. It’s just setting kids up for failure. It’s really terribly, terribly unfair. And as a psychologist, I’m sure environments profoundly shape our behavior. That’s not really subject to debate anymore. It’s not a matter of internal character or grit or moral rectitude or any of these things, or it’s not exclusively those things. A lot of how you act in the world is what your environments allows you to do and encourages you to do. And an environment basically that’s now full of what are functionally slot machines as far as your brain perceives them, is not going to be one where kids can pay attention. And if you think it’s just kids to blame, try sitting at a left turn light and watching the person just sitting there letting the green arrow scroll while they’re looking at their phone. Adults can’t avoid this stuff either. And so like I said, it’s just terribly, terribly unfair to young people to hold them to a higher standard than we hold ourselves as adults.

Dr. Sarah (18:47):

Yes, I very much agree, and anecdotally, I see a lot of kids in my practice who, I mean people obviously, it’s a self-selecting population, right? People come to therapy a lot of times because they do have attentional challenges or impulse control challenges or they’re struggling with some social skills or things like that. But I feel like this tech in the classroom at the extent to which it’s just ubiquitous, it’s like in every pocket of the kids’ day, including social times, you see these pictures of you walk past a playground and kids are just sitting on their Chromebooks. Schools hasn’t started yet, and kids are congregating outside of school. They’re all just on their devices. They’re not talking to each other, they’re not playing. And then I take my kid to Hebrew school on Tuesday nights and there’s snack time. And when I was growing up, that was the time when everyone was running around making friends, goofing around being you walk in and all the kids are eating their snack and everyone is either on their Chromebook or the kids who don’t have them are just peering over the shoulders, the kids on their Chromebooks.

(19:59):

I’m like, you’re killing me. This is taking away, it’s displacing a ton of social interactions. And of course for those kids who have attentional challenges or impulse control challenges, it’s incredibly overstimulating, which makes it really hard to hit the brakes when it’s time to hit the brakes. So I do agree very much that it’s putting stress on systems for kids that are already fragile just because of their developmental stage, but even more so for the kids who are struggling with certain types of elements, that skill building that they’re really trying to catch up to is being phenomenally displaced by these screens in the classroom. And I think it’s a big problem.

(20:50):

And then I’m also thinking about how the teachers, I’m like, oh man, my heart breaks for the teachers who are sitting there in a classroom feeling that what feels like being between a rock and a hard place, I don’t think this is a teacher issue. This is really a bigger, bigger systemic issue. What is your sense of how teachers feel about ed tech in the classrooms and their, I’m sure you talk with teachers and what’s your sense of, do they feel hamstrung by it? Do they feel like, no, there’s a place for it? Do they feel like they hate that it exists, but they have to figure out how to work inside that system?

Andy (21:33):

There’s a range of responses. I love teachers. My grandma was a public school teacher forever. I really fondly remember many of my teachers from school. And so I don’t think anybody went into teaching to basically be a proctor to watch kids take tests on computers. And they certainly didn’t go become teachers to watch what kids do on their computers all day and discipline them. And so just that dynamic alone is really interfering with that very important teacher student relationship and interfering with students’ relationships with each other. And so teachers are really, really frustrated, especially the more experienced teachers who kind of remember the time before at EdTech was so ubiquitous. They’re leaving the profession. And it’s not just because of EdTech, it’s because of a lot of other strains and disinvestment, but it’s very hard to be a teacher. My heart really goes out to teachers right now.

(22:33):

They’re the frontline, but they’re not responsible for the most part. These mandates come from the top. And to the extent school administrators are responsible, I don’t think they have the full story either. I would hold them probably the most responsible. But really it’s these companies that are coming in and selling what I consider snake oil to these schools. And if you think about back in the old days when snake oil was a literal thing and some guy with his wagon would come to town selling snake oil, well, who’s buying snake oil? It’s not the healthy people. It’s not the people with access to doctors. It’s people who are desperate. It’s people who really feel like I need a miracle. And so many of our nation’s public schools feel that way. So they’re poised to believe that, well, this will solve all your problems. This will allow you to teach a class of 35 to 40 kids. This will allow you to be so much more efficient and effective and keep your costs down when funding is being cut. And oh, by the way, this is the future, and God forbid we don’t prepare our kids for the future. And so how could you dare stand in the way of that these that school districts are receiving from this industry that are so pernicious and so just exploitative and I think made very much in bad faith.

Dr. Sarah (23:57):

Yeah, it really does feel from what you’re saying that obviously, I mean, I have a very privileged situation where I live in a school district that’s got a lot of access to resources. And a lot of the people in my Westchester have a lot of well-funded school districts still dealing with a lot of these issues. And I imagine that the school districts with the most vulnerable school districts with the least amount of funding and the largest populations to serve with the most level of challenges that they have to contend with are probably most vulnerable to this kind of marketing. And it sounds pretty aggressively targeted at that, like you said, exploiting that particular vulnerability of being just completely overtaxed as a school system to try to provide services for the number of students with the needs that they have.

Andy (25:04):

That’s absolutely right. I mean, you see, as with so much of surveillance capitalism, the burdens fall most heavily on the least advantaged. There’s been many reports of what they call algorithmic bias, but basically these insights I was talking about earlier, the product that these companies sell, they have a way of just perpetuating the status quo. And so if you’re a person who lives in the high crime neighborhood, to take a very elementary example, you’re more likely to be tagged by these algorithms as a criminal as opposed to just a victim of crime. And so the same thing is happening in schools where the lower performing schools, these kids are going into these environments and all of this information is being gathered about them and inferences are being made about them that reflect their environment and not them, which is really unfair to them. And really contrary to the purpose of public education, which is to provide people opportunities and to help people become their best self, to give them those resources to grow and to actually leave those circumstances behind.

(26:13):

An argument that I hear a lot is the equity argument and one that schools with more disadvantaged populations feel an obligation to give them technology because they might not have computers at home. They might not have the internet at home, and it’s so important that they not feel left out or left behind. Well, I would say what’s more inequitable giving a kid a device they can’t use? If you think about designing your system for the most vulnerable people within it, think about a homeless child. They don’t have a home to go to, they don’t have reliable internet, and if you’re making them do homework on their computer, where are they going to plug it in? How are they going to do this? What kind of burdens are you placing on the most vulnerable people? Whereas pen and paper travel, you don’t need to have to plug it in or recharge it. You don’t need an internet connection. These are things that anybody can use. And so really thinking more systemically about vulnerability and about fairness, I would say cautions against overuse of EdTech and much more toward considered use, not only using the technology, but teaching kids about the technology, which we’re also not doing, and I’m happy to talk about further.

Dr. Sarah (27:37):

Yeah, I would love to talk about that because I think there is a big difference between ed tech and technology, right? Technology, I believe truthfully is an important tool that needs to be taught, and we want kids to be educated consumers of technology. We want them to be literate and sophisticated and agile with those systems. But it doesn’t sound like ed tech is really teaching that. It’s just sort of becoming this, I don’t know how you would describe it, this blob that kind of just sits everywhere and lowers the common denominator of learning instead of it being this individualized tool that a student learns how to use.

Andy (28:22):

Absolutely no. It obscures how technology works of kids. When I was a kid, you could build your own computer, you could go down to Radio Shack or get on Gateway and they would send you parts and you could put your own computer together. Now, these devices themselves are way locked down. You really can’t build your own Chromebook or build your own iPad. And then just starting out from there, it’s so much harder to see how do these things work to get into not only the code, but what’s happening on the backend? Where’s all of this information going and how is that being used? When I’m put on a track of being high low achieving based on my performance on these different computerized assessment tools, I don’t get to see how that decision is made. I just get the outcome. I just get the black box and that result.

(29:15):

And so because we’re obscuring technology and how it functions, and we’re trying to teach every single subject through the medium of an internet connected tablet or a low cost Chromebook, we’re really squandering the opportunity for explicit technology education and explicit media literacy and teaching kids way before they ever sit down in front of a laptop. How the internet works, I mean, what is surveillance capitalism? How did all of this evolve? What is the difference to the environment of you walking down the street to the library versus performing a Google search versus asking ChatGPT? The environmental cost of these things are staggering. Teaching kids what is the cloud? It’s not literally a cloud, even though it seems like a lot of our administrators think of it that way. It’s a massive physical infrastructure that exists, and that continues to transform not just the environment overall, but specific communities where these big data centers are placed. And so there’s so much education, it’s such a rich topic to teach kids, and we’re doing none of it. We’re doing none of it. We are plopping them down with an iPad in kindergarten and saying, good luck, kiddo. And that is just a terrible framework for preparing kids for the future, which is what I think we all agree we want.

Dr. Sarah (30:42):

So how do we instill some hope at parents who might be like, I can see a parent just driving their car, squeezing the wheel tighter and tighter as they listen to this being like, oh my God, this is terrifying. And also, what do I do? I can’t change the system. What am I going to take my kid out of school because they have a Chromebook in every single classroom? One, I’m going to ask you so many questions, but I’ll break it down. But first, is there some hope and what are you doing and with EdTech Law Center and your advocacy work, and also maybe then we could talk a little bit about what parents can do to advocate so that they don’t feel so helpless.

Andy (31:20):

Sure. There’s always hope. There’s always is a renewable resource. I wouldn’t be doing this if I didn’t have hope. That’s one thing that you can always have is hope. So of course there’s hope. Is it going to be easy? No, it’s not going to be easy. Is it going to be uncomfortable? Absolutely. And I can tell some parents some stories about my motivation for getting into this. Our first case is focused on data privacy, but as I mentioned previously, that’s a huge harm. It’s not the harm I’m most worried about. It’s really what this is doing to individual kids day in and day out. And so a couple of anecdotes about the types of harms that have happened at school and what schools have done in return. So six years ago, kind of our origin story here was, a family in the Austin area, had a 6-year-old son in first grade at I think probably the wealthiest school district in the entire state of Texas. So it’s a wealthy suburb of Austin, and they were one of the very first to go one-to-one on their iPads for young kids. And their first grade son was in class and on his school issue, iPad on the school network in the middle of the school day and would ask Siri for pictures of sexy girls. And he was delivered back in class at school. And this went on for weeks. The teacher when she found out was mortified and horrified and very upset and called the parents crying, feeling like she let the family down, that it was her responsibility to keep this boy safe. And she’d failed at that. The parents looked at each other and said, well, why was this even possible?

(33:00):

Why on earth would my 6-year-old have an iPad in class, much less one that can do this? And so they started banding together with other parents in the district and took it to the school board meeting, which is where Julie and I found out about it. So we actually attended the school board meeting and it was unanimous. All the parents lined up and spoke and told other stories of their own and asked, can we not just have one classroom, one first grade classroom without iPads in it? And the district, the board said no. And so the parents continued to meet on an individual basis with the school district administrators and asked Julia and me to come along. We were lawyers who weren’t practicing in this area at the time, but we were very sympathetic to what they were doing. And so we agreed to come on and just kind of sit in on these meetings.

(33:48):

And the upshot of the meetings were that the administrators told the family that maybe this isn’t the right district for you. Maybe you should consider pulling your kid out of school. This is a public school district. And you think about what an insult that is to the whole idea of public education. And what ended up happening was they did leave school, they did leave the district, they did leave, but what they did was share a very potentially embarrassing story that the district would’ve encouraged them to cover up. And in the context of their speaking out and their bravery, many other families came forward and told their own stories about what has happened to their own kids. And as bad as that was, there were many worse stories that happened. Cyber bullying, young kids being contacted by adults, online, sextortion, all kinds of horrible things, kids viewing videos, encouraging anorexic behavior, encouraging, cutting.

(34:52):

And I said, there’s hope, but this goes on. This goes on to this day. And the cases that we’re bringing, some subset of the cases we’re bringing have to do with exactly these harms where kids are going to school and many of your patients, they may have attention issues and they’re in this environment and they can’t pay attention and they’re just watching YouTube all day long and can’t control themselves. That’s the best case scenario. Worst case scenario, it gets worse from there where you still have these instances of young girls being fed anorexia content and self-harm content. You’ve got cyber bullying, you’ve got all kinds of radicalization that’s happening to young men and women, and it’s all happening through the school issued computer.

Dr. Sarah (35:37):

Are you finding that these things are happening during the school day while they’re supposed to be in class paying attention? Or is these things happening at home when they’re just using their computer recreationally cause they have it?

Andy (35:48):

Both. Both. And so the challenge is kids can find ways to YouTube at school and they’ll watch it all day long. In the worst instances, these kids who truly have no impulse control are suffering that, but then they go home, they’re trying to do homework. Mom and dad think they’re in their bedroom doing homework. Well, they’re still doing this. Or in the case of cyber bullying that follows you home. And I’m not trying to be Pollyanna about how middle school used to be. It’s always been hard. It’s always been hard, but you at least got to go home and now that stuff follows you around and schools aren’t doing enough to prevent that sort of thing from happening either.

Dr. Sarah (36:33):

Yeah, I mean, you bring up a lot of very seriously damaging things, and I imagine those are the kinds of things that could potentially move legislation. But just to fill in the spaces from my own end of things where I’m not looking at, I mean, I certainly see those things in my practice, but I’m also seeing, like I was saying before, a lot of things that are, what am I trying to say? These more seemingly benign things that are deeply displacing appropriate development and academic growth. So yeah, you have these very specific and very serious harms that need to be addressed. But then there’s also these low level sort of insidious micro harms that I don’t think a lot of people are even aware that are happening. Or if they are, they maybe are like, well, I can’t bring that to my school board. So okay, my kid’s not getting making friends at recess, or they’re feeling like they want to avoid certain classes because they actually weren’t paying attention because the teacher doesn’t notice that they’re on YouTube all the time or playing these games.

(37:56):

So now they’ve missed huge portions of the lesson and now they’re avoiding and feeling embarrassed and ashamed about that. And so that becomes a bit of a snowball that they can’t get ahead of. There’s a ton of impact I think that we all have to look at. And so maybe this, I think it’s really important, what I’m taking from what you’re saying is that it’s really important for parents to speak up about these explicit harms and make that known in a way that people can really use that to put some pressure on the school districts and the tech companies really more specifically. But I also feel like there’s got to be some things that parents can do to perhaps advocate for their kids on the school level. But even at home, I’m sure, I mean, I’m happy to come up with some ideas for what parents could do at home to help their kids, but what are you finding is helpful for parents to do in terms of actual advocacy work to address these issues?

Andy (39:01):

So here’s where the hope comes in. You’re not alone. You’re not alone. And so all parents are dealing with this issue, and I think we’re all kind of conditioned to view any struggle we have with technology as a parenting failure. It’s not.

(39:18):

Here’s your get out of jail free card. You are not responsible. It’s not your fault if your kid has problems with technology, it is not your fault. It is stuff that is being designed in order to encourage these undesirable behaviors that are very harmful for kids. And so compulsive use, addictive use, habitual use, however you want to frame it, that’s money for these companies. That’s money for this business model. And so you and your child are no match for trillion dollar companies with armies of behavioral psychologists that workshop every little detail to make sure that people are staying on and using these things as much as possible. And so there’s piece number one, be nice to yourself. Don’t take it so hard. And so personally as a personal failing point number two is since we’re all in the same boat and we all have bad things happen to our kids online, start talking about ’em.

(40:16):

Talk to other parents. I think it’s important to talk to your children about what’s the worst thing you’ve seen on the internet maybe ever, maybe this week. What’s the worst thing you saw on your school device? How does it make you feel? And start having those conversations in your own family. What would you like this to be different? What does class feel like? How does it make you feel? And then compare that to how does going to the park make you feel? How does being outside and going on a bike ride or recess, how does using your body make you feel? Can you observe a difference in how your body feels and how your mind feels, how your soul feels? And then it’s working together, it it’s working together and banding together as parents. And so brace yourself for a long fight. This is not going to be one of those things where you go for one meeting and they say, oh, good point. You’ve got all these great studies and books and we’ll change everything we’re doing. That’s not how it’s going to work. But it’s not to say that it’s not a fight. We can’t win. It’s just one that we have to do together. And in solidarity or in community, however you want to frame that. One of the things I love about this work is it truly touches everybody and there is not a kind of person that this doesn’t affect.

Dr. Sarah (41:43):

Yeah, no, it’s emotional when you think about how much these are very vulnerable people who we care deeply about, and we spend probably most of our waking time thinking about how to keep them safe. And it’s scary to think that this can feel so big and so out of our hands. But I also feel like what you’re saying is very important, and I don’t want to scare parents or freak everybody out. We’re going to be okay. Your kids are okay, and we kind of need to bring the bell a bit here and we need to be willing to get in those uncomfortable conversations and to make a little bit of noise and be a squeaky wheel. I don’t think this is going to go away unless parents are actually able to band together and get a little bit louder and actually hold some of these systems to account. Are there resources that you guys have in terms like with EdTech Law Center for parents to maybe learn more about how they can be a squeaky wheel or bring these issues to higher level places so that they can actually get a platform to talk about this stuff?

Andy (43:05):

Absolutely. So a great place to start is we have a section on our website that outlines all the many harms of EdTech, and then we also have a white paper that’s a little bit more digestible that you can print out. I think it’s like three pages. And it’s basically our brief against EdTech and our framing there is EdTech steals, it hurts and it doesn’t work. And that’s how we’re approaching our lawsuits. And so it steals, meaning it buys your kids and takes their personal information. And there are laws on the books that give you, as a parent serious control over that information that these companies are blowing right through.

(43:51):

The arguments I’ve seen so far are tremendously unpersuasive. And these companies behave as though children have no right of privacy at school whatsoever, and that parents have no rights over their kids’ lives at school. We’ll see how those fare in the courts, but I had put the money on us, not on them, because they’re really way off base when it comes to those arguments. And so starting with those resources is a good place to start. As far as community building resources, I’m sure many of your listeners have heard of wait until eighth or these other pledges where parents band together and say, we’re not going to give our kids a smartphone until they’re in eighth grade because the science is coming in that it’s bad for kids’ mental health, especially for young girls. And it’s also something that once one kid gets it, it’s just kind of the dam starts to break and then everybody wants one.

(44:49):

And so it’s easier if we collectively band together to say, we’re not giving our kids their own personal cell phone, their iPhone or Android phone until they’re in eighth grade. Having those conversations early, that’s a good way to start getting your community to together. And so if you think about the parents in your kid’s kindergarten or first grade class, that’s a great time to do it because very few kids that age, their parents are giving them their own cell phone. I mean, societal attitudes have changed enough that that’s not considered a great parenting or normal thing to do. And so start having those conversations when your kids are young. If they’re older, of course it’s never too late, but building that community early and getting to know the other parents and thinking about these issues as not ones that just affect only your kid and only your family, but that affect everybody and all of their friends and all of our future.

(45:46):

I mean, it’s so corny to say children are the future, but they really are. And if you think about the future that we’re offering these kids, one of constant surveillance and one where all your relationships are mediated by technology, one where your teacher is not a trusted authority figure, but a person who instead is there to troubleshoot your software and then get mad at you when you’re not on task. These are all really profoundly upsetting thoughts for the future. And so community action working together, that’s a really important avenue and that’s really what our lawsuits are. So class action lawsuits, they are community action in the courts. And the idea behind a class action lawsuit is you have a representative, handful of plaintiffs who are very similar or identical to everybody else similarly situated. And so we’re bringing lawsuits against a couple of companies on behalf of all the parents and students that use them.

(46:52):

It’s millions of people. And so this collective action is also really important and kind of interestingly coming full circle because the earliest use cases of the class action rules were to enforce people’s civil rights at schools back when schools were resisting integration class action lawsuits were used to vindicate people’s civil rights at school. And I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say this is every bit as much of a civil rights issue today as it was 60, 70 years ago. These are profoundly affecting young people’s civil rights, their rights to think freely, to speak freely, to have a childhood, to not be known by companies and by the government. These are things that we’ve long valued for young people especially, and they’re just profoundly threatened.

Dr. Sarah (47:50):

Yeah, yeah. I know on your website you talk about parents’ rights. Are these legal? Is this enforceable? If you are a parent who feels like your rights to your child’s education is infringed upon, did you guys come up with those rights or are those from the law?

Andy (48:10):

They are founded in the law, and these are arguments that we’re going to be making in court. And so there are federal statutes that again provide parents tremendous control over what a company may collect about their child. Certainly under 13 COPPA is that law, and then also what a school may collect about their child and how it can be used. And that’s ferpa. The challenge is there’s no private right of action, meaning an individual person can’t sue ought to vindicate those specific rights. Those are only enforceable by federal or state agencies. And from my perspective, they have not been vigorously enforced enough over the past, certainly 30 years. But these rights are founded very fundamentally in not just statutory law, but the common law, what we think about in terms of privacy as a society and property. And so parents do have rights, and we are advancing theories that have been vindicated in other lawsuits. We’re really not breaking new ground here conceptually. It’s only that we’re applying great law in this new context of educational technology.

Dr. Sarah (49:30):

Well, the work you’re doing is very important. I’m so grateful that you’re doing it and that you’re helping parents understand that it’s available, that it exists, and that they can seek it out, whether it’s, I don’t know, where do parents go? Do they go to their school board? Do they call you guys? Do they call another lawyer? How do they find, let’s say something harmful did happen to one of their kids well, while being at school using this technology, or if they feel like their rights have been consistently impeded upon, where can they go?

Andy (50:02):

So we’re at EdTech Law, that’s our website. And so we are a consumer protection law firm. We don’t take any fee from parents or students. And so our services are free unless we win. We operate on a full contingency model for parents and students. And so you can start with us. We have a contact box. Send me an email and I’ll call you back personally and talk to you about what’s happened. So that’s one place to start. Other places to start again, are having these conversations in your school, and these aren’t mutually exclusive, but I still try to approach these situations with a very open heart, even though it’s been very frustrating and very sad to see what’s happened to young people in school, I still have to believe that administrators and teachers actually do want what’s best for students and kids. I’ll never get that cynical no matter how much bad behavior I see. I think fundamentally, most people want what’s right for young people and start having those conversations. And the more people you can bring in and the more you can make it a reflection of the community, the better off you’re going to be. And so try to form those relationships. And it’s hard. It’s hard to make friends as an adult. It’s hard to find time to volunteer at school. I get all that, but I view this as a very serious threat to young people now and in the future.

(51:39):

And so take it seriously, treat it like an existential threat, treat it like something that is harmful and scary and dangerous, but also something you can affect, something you can help change. And to be able to go into these conversations, not just on a one-off basis by yourself or with a specific complaint, but with we as a community have concerns about how technology is being used in school and would like a voice in what we do next. Some other excellent resources. The organization that I could not have done this without is Fair Play. Formerly the Campaign for Commercial Free Childhood. They are a true grassroots organization. They take no corporate money and they help organize parents. And so they have a number of resources and toolkits for parents on their website. They also have community groups that you can get involved with if you want to become more active in these issues, sign up because there are many opportunities for you to be involved meeting other like-minded people from across the country, speaking to lawmakers, whether at the state or federal level or administrative enforcement agencies too.

(52:48):

There’s tremendous opportunities there. And then as far as day-to-day resources go, one that I really like, it’s a group that I met through my activism at Fair Play. It is called Every School school.org, and they have created what’s called the EdTech Triangle, and it’s basically an evaluation decision-making framework for schools about what is good technology and what is bad technology. And talking about EdTech as a whole full stop even in this conversation is pretty reductive, right? Because it’s so massive and it has so many different parts and facets to it, it’s very hard to distinguish what’s good and what’s bad. And so they do a great job of spelling out when technology can be used in school, when it should be used in school, or when a non-technological option is better. And so those are tremendous starting places for parents who are interested in these issues.

Dr. Sarah (53:46):

That’s perfect. Thank you. And we will link as many of those things as we can in the show notes and the show description. I know I said I’d talk about some things that parents can do to sort of support their kids’ use at home, but I think in the interest of time, I’m going to direct parents to go back to, I have a couple episodes where we’ve talked about this specifically the episode that I recorded with Ale Duarte where he is this amazing somatic experiencing practitioner, and he has this whole way of this metaphor of describing technology use as currents in a river. And he came on the show and recorded an episode about that. So I think that was episode 202, so I’ll link that in the show notes also. But it’s a really helpful episode, I think, for understanding what it feels like in our kids’ bodies to be moving through the different currents of tech with one, I think one was the calm waters and then there was the adventure stream, and then there’s the sort of higher risk, I forget what it was called, the risky stream.

(54:48):

And then there was the danger stream and how it’s easy for kids to move in deeper and faster into these more dangerous streams, but their awareness of that is kind of whisked away by the speed with which we can move into these deeper currents. And so it was a lot about helping kids notice and become more reflective of their physiological sensations, helping them kind of understand how do you know when you’re moving into this adventure stream and it feels really good and everything is like, oh, that’s really easy and everything is no gravity. And then how quickly that can go into the stress waters where like, oh, wait, hold on, this doesn’t feel so good. Or I feel like I just dodged a bullet. And then how quickly you could go into the actual harm stream where it’s like, oh, wait, I didn’t dodge that bullet.

(55:33):

I got hit. Or somebody got hit metaphorically, like I got hurt or someone got hurt. And so that I think is a very helpful framework for helping your kids become a player in this work of noticing when it’s becoming too much and how to be regulating that a little bit better. And I think that’s helpful for young kids as well as big kids. So I’ll definitely link that. And then there’s also an episode that I did with Emily Kin who I know who talked a lot more about some of the ways that parents can sort of advocate in home and in school for helping their kids become educated consumers of technology. So I’ll link that episode too. Andy, thank you so much for coming on.

Andy (56:20):

Absolutely. Yeah, and if I could, just a concluding thought, and in that vein, if you don’t mind, parents I think should try and give kids the childhood they want to want. And so every once in a while there are these long form reported stories about kids who go give up their phones for a while. There’s the new documentary on FX called Social Studies that’s very interesting and follows kids basically through their phones and also in real life interviews. Those kids give up their phones for a while and almost uniformly they say, gosh, this felt so good. This wasn’t something that if everybody didn’t have one of these things, how much better would life be? No one wants this stuff. We all want nobody to have it. And so help create that kind of environment for your kids. And so in our house, what that looks like is there are kids over here constantly, kids from school.

(57:16):

Anytime our kids want to have a friend over, they’re welcome. If they want to have five friends over, they’re welcome. If they want to stay the night, they’re welcome. They’re not on their phones or on their iPads, they’re outside. They’re running around behind the green screen here is our dress up closet. I’m up on our third floor kind of bonus room. And so give them those real life opportunities at home. Thank you for it later, and it’ll make you at home just such a place of joy and happiness and fun while they’re young, because it does go fast. I got started doing this. My kids are three in one and they’re older now.

Dr. Sarah (57:51):

But it’s true. I mean, just end on one more note of hope and agency is yes, you might have to contend with this tech stuff in school, and you also can have a lot of say in what happens outside of school. And so if you are creating those boundaries and creating not just those boundaries that are always like saying no, but saying yes to what all the other fun stuff, what opportunities are you creating to displace tech and not the other way around? So I think that that’s a really hopeful thing. We have control over what happens in your home. I know sometimes it doesn’t feel like it because our kids feel like you little tyrants who are just demanding screens all the time, but we can model it. We can set the tone, you can tolerate their distress when we say no, and we can create a lot of opportunities to provide fun alternatives and relationship and connection building things as well. So thank you so much. Thank you for the work you do. Thank you for explaining this to all of us. I hope everyone’s feeling a little more grounded after we talked about what we can do instead of what we’re, ahhh.

Andy (59:05):

It was my pleasure. Thank you so much for having me on. Sarah would love to come back as these cases work their way through the courts and would certainly welcome any listener who has a question or a problem. Just reach out. We’re here. That’s why we started this law firm. We’re here to help you. So if you hear my voice, we are here to help you and your family.

Dr. Sarah (59:21):

Amazing. All right. Thank you.

Andy (59:24):

Thank you.

Dr. Sarah (59:30):

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